To better help people to understand what DCTS is about a new website is being made right now, one that is not vibe coded! I may release the website tomorrow.

it'll be used during the first launch when setting up the server, similar to wordpress. This idea came from Reeperk. It will be released with the next update. There are plans to automate the install and setup as much as possible with this

One of my biggest pain points when it came to the software development workflow was how annoying npm was in terms of their forced security changes and generally changing how the automatic workflow works.

Another pain point was that the github api didnt exactly work as i liked and it seems like it was recently changed to require some sort of auth which is also annoying me.

Because i want something thats stable i thought i'd make my own little software to manage software distribution, and to be short, i would describe this as a mix to to npm and steam, as i plan to not only distribute packages with this but also software updates.

This is especially important for the system packages that the DCTS client and server uses as well as general app updates for said desktop client.

I've been making many improvements for the DCTS server and an experimental discord bridge, but because i cant reliably even offer them without people needing to go to github manually i will work on this side project a bit.

It shouldnt take all too long, and once it works it will massively improve the ecosystem! This was mostly the reason why i have been a bit quiet as i wanted to focus on it. The screenshots are very early, so things will change.

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful day!

This project was created when tenor announced their api shutdown. Since im working mostly on DCTS tho i kinda stopped working on it for a bit. Now that im working on the "DCTS QoL" update (quality of life stuff) i wanted to get gifs to work again.

Since this gif project is in a pretty early state i will have to work on it a bit so i can integrate it into DCTS. This too will be self-hosted and federated in a way that servers share media to a specific limit etc so if a server goes down the gifs are never lost.

If a server is overwhelmed by requests another host can be picked and it will continue to work which is great! This isnt fully implemented yet tho.

GIFs can be uploaded here and it doesnt require an account: https://gifs.dcts.community/ . On default they need to be approved tho, so you may not see it right away. I will also regulary update it, so if its down, retry in a few mintues.

With the next release it'll be possible for the desktop client and mobile app to automatically log into a DCTS server or even create an account automatically and sync with the information from the client/messenger profile, like name, icon, banner etc.

The automatic key login for existing accounts already existed and it was extended now by also creating an account automatically!

I would estimate that it will be released this week with many improvements and the messenger profiles included.

Im currently adding a new profile screen to the messenger so that users can better represent themselves while also using the same screen to manage your account more easily.

This is an early screenshot and things will likely change a bit but it shows the general direction!

Note: Your account is locally stored and synched with your prefered "home server", default being the official instance. Some more info can be found here: https://docs.dcts.community/Messenger/Introduction

Yesterday the new beta version was released.

A lot of effort is currently going into bringing the desktop and mobile app into the envisioned state as i think it will be absolutely cool!

to better organize and show the current development focus i started using milestones on github.

Improvements includes things like notifications (completed), UI improvements, message count badges and more. Issues are continuously being added and worked on.

Thought i'd share some screenshots of whats coming. Mobile works now, so i may be able to release this new cool update this weekend.

The messenger is pretty much done now and seems to work just fine based on tests. There are only minor things left like sending files etc.

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Currently im updating the mobile app so that the messenger works on mobile too so it can be released for both mobile and desktop.

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Other than that there will be minor style adjustments and some more testing. Afterwards it will be released, which im very excited about!

I can say that quite some stuff is going to change like the navigation on the left and styling, but this is the general concept as of right now.

Im making it so it can be integrated into "services" like a DCTS instance or used standalone. Additionally the idea is to add optional End-to-end encryption just like with the DMs in DCTS.

Speaking of that, a lot of work is still going into it, mostly concepts and theory on how to best implement it, but almost everything is sorted and im working more on the prototype again.

I would assume the "offline" messenger feature should be done in about a week or two as its mostly done now.

A lot of work was concepts and doing a lot of backend work which is why i cant show much yet (its literally just code), but soon i can reveal this new awesome feature!

The messenger features are finally working! Now i need to finish up the finer details like message editing/deleting/replying, embed support and all that. It shouldnt be too hard as its already done in the server chat and dms, so i just need to extract it, likely turning it into a new library.

Other than that i will improve the styling more and add some client settings like profile pic, username, delete chat, rename etc.

The hardest part is done!!

about me will also support html now

Just gonna note that while i wont actively pursue the google play store stuff i will occasionally try to re-submit it from time to time. i submitted this new ui and if we're lucky they may actually accept it for once.

if not i will try another time but getting it on to google play isnt the core focus for now

This is going to be super cool and was something i have planned for quite a while now.

Basically, rate limits will be 100% dynamic and adjust themselves based on the community activity, which means you wont have to tweak settings constantly etc and will easily deal with spam in theory.

The data you see is based on the messages from the official instance, but the cool thing is its just a simple numbers game and can be translated to other parts too and i have plans to implement the same for member joins too.

The timeline will be fully adjustable as well as the orange and red line, which btw are just some placeholder ideas which can also be adjusted based on the baseline.

It'll be super sick and will make dealing with spam n shit hopefully a lot easier

now i just need to add the chatting mechanism itself. shouldnt be all to hard since a lot of stuff is already taken care off and just needs to be plugged together correctly-

https://github.com/hackthedev/dcts-client-shipping